CHAPTER VII.
The Locomotive Engine.—Camden.
Considering how many fine feelings and good feelings adorn the interior of the human heart, it is curious to observe with what facility we can put them all to sleep, or, if they won’t sleep, stupify ourselves, at any moment when it becomes inconvenient to us to listen to their friendly admonitions. All the while mailing, coaching, and posting were in fashion, every man’s countenance beamed—every person’s tongue gabbled freely as it described not only “the splendid rate” (say ten miles an hour) at which he had travelled, but the celerity with which no sooner had the words “First turn-out!” been exclaimed by the scout, who vanished as soon as he had uttered them, than four horses in shining harness had appeared half hobbling half trotting from under the archway of the Red Lion, the Crown, or the Three Bells, before which the traveller had from a canter been almost suddenly pulled up, to receive various bows, scrapes, and curtsies from the landlord and his rosy-faced cap-beribboned wife. But, although we could all accurately describe our own enjoyments, and, like Johnson, expatiate on “the delightful sensations” we experienced in what we called fast travelling, who among us ever cared to ascertain, or even for a single moment to think of, the various arrangements necessary for watering, feeding, cleaning, and shoulder-healing all the poor horses whose “brilliant” performances we had so much admired? Whether they slept on straw or on stones—indeed, whether they slept at all—what was their diet—what, if any, were their enjoyments—what were their sufferings—and, lastly, how and where they eventually died—it would have been deemed exceedingly vulgar to inquire; and so, after with palpitating flanks and panting nostrils they had once been unhooked from our splinter-bars,
“Where they went, and how they fared,
No man knew, and no man cared!”
In a similar way we now chloroform all kindly feelings of inquiry respecting the treatment of the poor engine-drivers, firemen, and even of the engine that has safely conveyed us through tunnels and through storms at the rate of thirty, forty, and occasionally even fifty miles an hour—
“Oh no! we never mention them!”
and in fact scarcely do we deign to look at them. Indeed even while in the train, and most especially after we had left it, we should feel bored to death by being asked to reflect for a moment on any point or any person connected with it. We have therefore, we feel, to apologise at least to some of our readers for intruding upon them, in bringing “betwixt the wind and their nobility” the following uninteresting details.
As soon as an engine has safely dragged a passenger-train to the top of the incline at Camden Station, at which point the coupling-chains which connect it with its load are instantly unhooked, it is enabled by the switchman to get from the main line upon a pair of almost parallel side rails, along which, while the tickets are being collected, it may be seen and heard retrograding and hissing past its train. After a difficult and intricate passage from one set of rails to another, advancing or “shunting” backwards as occasion may require, it proceeds to the fire-pit, over which it stops. The fireman here opens the door of his furnace, which by a very curious process is made to void the red-hot contents of its stomach into the pit purposely constructed to receive them, where the fire is instantly extinguished by cold water ready laid on by the side. Before, however, dropping their fire, the drivers are directed occasionally to blow off their steam to clean; and we may further add that once a-week the boiler of every engine is washed out to get rid of sediment or scale, the operation being registered in a book kept in the office. After dropping his fire, the driver, carefully taking his fire-bars with him, conducts his engine into an immense shed or engine-stable 400 feet in length by 90 in breadth, generally half full of locomotives, where he examines it all over, reporting in a book what repairs are wanting, or, if none (which is not often the case), he reports it “correct.” He then takes his lamps to the lamp-house to be cleaned and trimmed by workmen solely employed to do so, after which he fetches them away himself. Being now off duty, he and his satellite fireman go either to their homes or to a sort of club-room containing a fire to keep them warm, a series of cupboards to hold their clothes, and wooden benches on which they may sit, sleep, or ruminate until their services are again required; and here it is pleasing to see these fine fellows in various attitudes enjoying rest and stillness after the incessant noise, excitement, and occasional tempests of wind and rain, to which—we will say nothing of greater dangers—they have been exposed.
The duties which the engine-driver has to perform are not only of vital importance, but of a nature which peculiarly illustrates the calm, unpretending, bull-dog courage, indigenous to the moist healthy climate of the British Isles. Even in bright sunshine, to stand—like the figure-head of a ship—foremost on a train of enormous weight, which, with fearful momentum, is rushing forward faster than any race-horse can gallop, requires a cool head and a calm heart; but to proceed at this pace in dark or foggy weather into tunnels, along embankments, and through deep cuttings, where it is impossible to foresee any obstruction, is an amount of responsibility which scarcely any other situation in life can exceed; for not only is a driver severely, and occasionally without mercy, punished for any negligence he himself may commit, but he is invariably sentenced personally to suffer on the spot for any accident that from the negligence of others may suddenly befall the road along which he travels, but over which he has not the smallest control. The greatest hardship he has to endure, however, is from cold, especially that produced in winter by evaporation from his drenched clothes passing rapidly through the air. Indeed, when a gale of wind and rain from the north-west, triumphantly sweeping over the surface of the earth at its ordinary rate of say sixty miles an hour, suddenly meets the driver of the London and North-Western, who has not only to withstand such an antagonist, but to dash through him, and in spite of him to proceed in an opposite direction at the rate of say forty miles an hour—the conflict between the wet Englishman and Æolus, tilting by each other at the combined speed of a hundred miles an hour, forms a tournament of extraordinary interest.